Prime Minister Alexander De Croo wants to remove benefits from those not accepting to work after two years of being unemployed, a proposal which he will soon put forward to the Federal Government.
He explained to Open VLD members at a party conference on Sunday that the Flemish liberals in government had already proposed a similar measure in the past month. “But guess who swept these proposals off the table? It was the socialists,” he told his party colleagues.
However, the Flemish-centre left seems to have changed its tune on the issue, given the recent remarks by Vooruit’s party president Rousseau. In the run-up to Labour Day, Rousseau stated that Belgians not willing to work after two years of unemployment should have their benefits limited, with greater help provided to them by regional labour agencies.
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“Minds seem to have matured,” the Prime Minister told party members on Sunday in response to Rousseau’s statements. Keenly aware of the need to address Belgium's precarious budgetary position, De Croo is looking to push ahead in scrapping the unemployment benefits as a means of controlling the economic deficit.
He justified his stance by asserting that the change would help tackle the “real inequality in our country that lies between those who want to work and those who do not."
De Croo concluded with: “We must have the courage to say, on this Labour Day, that there is no shame in working." He insisted that “the real shame should be [about people who] work every day and still earn less than those who do not.”
